Written by

Sam Borden

Journal News columnist

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - It doesn't matter that they couldn't tackle anyone, couldn't stop anyone, couldn't keep anyone from getting a first down. Doesn't matter that they probably should have lost the game six different ways. Doesn't matter that it took a bad decision and a busted play for them to finally go ahead for good.

The Jets won. They won and they are still alive, and when the weather is this cold and the season is this late and the standings are this close, that is all that matters.

"It's like in baseball," quarterback Brett Favre was saying when it was over. "If you get a 'Punch-and-Judy' (pop-up) over the first baseman's head, then you look at the box score, it doesn't say 'Punch-and-Judy.' It says 'single.' ... We're 9-5 and in first place. There's no asterisk."

There is only another week. Another game that has meaning. A loss to the Bills yesterday would have nearly finished the Jets' playoff hopes, putting them right up with the 1986 Jets and the 1993 Jets and all the other Jets teams that found ways to turn success into squalor.

But they won. They survived. And so now they go on, to Seattle next weekend, for their next must-win game in this gantlet of three. Keep winning and they get in. Lose and their status slips into murkiness.

"One of the things I stressed this week is that it doesn't matter how we get to the final result ... as long as we get there," coach Eric Mangini said. "It could come a lot of different ways."

Here is how it ended up coming: With a fumble no one could have ever expected. With a mosh pit that left the referee bloodied after he got bowled over in all the confusion. And with a touchdown scored by a player who spent most of this week answering questions about his arrest on drug-possession charges.

It started with Bills coach Dick Jauron making the unorthodox decision to pass the ball on second-and-five from his own 27 with two minutes left in the game and a three-point lead. Coaching wisdom says run the ball, keep it conservative and just run the clock out on your way to a win. But quarterback J.P. Losman faded to his right and was looking for a receiver when Jets safety Abram Elam caught up to him from behind.

Elam had been on a backside blitz, a play that safeties love because if there's no running back waiting to block them, then a free shot at the quarterback awaits. On this play, there was no blocker, and Elam targeted Losman's right arm, hoping to jar the ball loose.

He hit Losman high, dragging the quarterback to the ground. He couldn't see anything, so Elam listened to hear if he'd knocked the ball out.

"I heard the crowd going wild," he said, and that's when he knew he had. Ellis - busted on Nov. 29 for having marijuana in his car - ended up with it and stumbled into the end zone as Favre stood on the sideline, hands on his helmet and mouth wide-open, stunned at what he had just seen. Jets 31, Bills 27. "There are a lot of things about that play that make you scratch your head," Favre said. "I'm just glad it was in our favor."

It wasn't the only break they got. The Bills had a 100-yard kickoff return for a touchdown called back on a questionable holding penalty earlier in the fourth quarter; the Jets got a lucky deflection that led to an interception; and the Jets survived two more Bills possessions after taking the lead before finally escaping to the locker room with the win.

Mangini conceded that there are "things to be looked at," and two good starting points might be pass defense and tackling. At one point, the Jets allowed the Bills - who had scored a grand total of six points in their previous two games - to breeze through a drive in which they got first downs on five of six plays (four of them passes), then scored a touchdown on a run by Fred Jackson when he literally dragged two Jets defenders over the goal line.

That drive looked too much like the Jets' previous two weeks, when they saw their season nearly fall apart in bad losses to Denver and San Francisco. Mangini supposedly had his players focus on "technique" and "fundamentals" in practice this week, but they still seemed to be lacking in many of the basics. The sellout crowd showed its displeasure with assorted booing sessions throughout the game.

"Guys got frustrated today, obviously, fans got frustrated, too," Favre said, and then he shrugged. "But we won the game."

Sometimes that kind of sentiment is sugar-coating, but on this day the quarterback had a point. There is a time for worrying and scrutinizing, a time for being upset about a game that looked so ugly. This isn't that time. The Jets got a win yesterday when they absolutely needed one and they saved their season. For this team at this point in this situation, that - and nothing else - is really all that matters.